When Children Kill Children

Penal Populism and Political Culture

David A. Green

Description

When Children Kill Children: Penal Populism and Political Culture examines the role of political culture and penal populism in the response to child-on-child homicide.

The book explores the reasons underlying the vastly differing responses of the English and Norwegian criminal justice systems to the cases of James Bulger and Silje Redergard respectively. Whereas James Bulger's killers were subject to extreme press and public hostility, held in secure detention for nine months and tried in an adverserial court; Redergard's killers were shielded from public antagonism and carefully reintegrated into the local community. This book argues that English adverserial political culture creates far more incentives to politicize high-profile crimes than Norwegian consensus political culture. Drawing on a wealth of empirical research, the author suggests that the tendency for politicians to justify punitive responses to crime by invoking harsh political attitudes is based upon a flawed understanding of public opinion.

In a compelling study, this book proposes a more deliberative response to crime that accommodates the informed public in news ways - ways that might help build social capital and remove incentives for cynical penal populism.

When Children Kill Children

Penal Populism and Political Culture

David A. Green

Table of Contents

1. When children kill children2. Culture, politics in the media in Norway and England3. Crime and punishment in Norway and England4. The constraints and effects of political culture5. The constraints of discourse6. Media constraints and the formation of political opinions7. Contextualizing tragedy8. English penal policy climates and political culture9. Political culture, legitimacy, and penal populism10. Public opinion versus public judgment11. Effecting penal climate change

When Children Kill Children

Penal Populism and Political Culture

David A. Green

Author Information

David A. Green is Assistant Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York. Prior to this he was a postdoctoral Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford. His main research interests involve the interrelationship between crime, media, public opinion, and politics in a comparative perspective. His work has appeared in The British Journal of Criminology, Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, European Journal of Criminology, and Crime, Media, Culture. His first book, When Children Kill Children: Penal Populism and Political Culture, was published by Oxford University Press in 2008 and won the 2009 British Society of Criminology Book Prize. He was selected as a Straus Fellow at New York University's Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice for 2010-11.